


He's not saying she was the answer but she was something

by Neighbourhoodcat



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: F/M, Kylo Ren Has Issues, Kylo Ren Needs a Hug, Road Trip, ft a knife, not really an AU since it's basically episode one and two of the show, teotfw-AU, thoughts of murder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-29
Updated: 2018-01-29
Packaged: 2019-03-10 20:40:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13509369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neighbourhoodcat/pseuds/Neighbourhoodcat
Summary: Being with Rey had started to make Kylo feel things. She made him feel things. And he did not like it at all.





	He's not saying she was the answer but she was something

Kylo met Rey when he was on the cusp of adulthood. No longer a child but not yet a man in the eyes of the law, he was in limbo. He stood taller than Han but his long noodle-like limbs, dishevelled hair, and overall appearance only made his mum baby him every day. At seventeen with no friends and an aloof expression permanently etched on his face, his family wondered if he was alright.

 

He wasn’t.

 

There was a voice inside his head that whispered bad things into his ears. It wanted him to hurt things and make them bleed. It was fascinated by death and decay and the idea of watching a being die, watching the light in its eyes slowly fade into nothingness. It was kind of fucked up. He was kind of fucked up. 

 

Sometimes, he wondered if he was a psychopath.

 

It would explain a lot of things. Why he nearly choked Mitaka to death back in the seventh grade. Why he threw Hux across the room just because he was wanted to hear the sickening sound of his bones breaking. Why he never felt anything from those events, certainly not regret and curiously not joy either. If he was a psycho then maybe it was why emotions were such a foreign concept to him.

 

There was no happiness or sadness, no pain or pleasure, only stillness within him. And homicidal tendencies.

 

Kylo thought it would be interesting to kill Rey so he pretended to fall in love with her. She was the new girl at school and no one really liked her. She was different. He wanted to gain her trust first, isolate her, and then stab her to death. 

 

When she kissed him for the first time he wondered if biting her swollen lower lip would make her scream in pain. When she rested a hand on his vibrating upper thigh he thought about cutting the delicate skin of her wrist. When she pushed his hand up her shirt he pondered over the idea of skinning her just to find out why her breasts were so soft.

 

It became clear to him early on that she genuinely believed he was properly enamoured with her. At least, that was what he gathered. Sometimes it was difficult to think lucidly when she took off her top and asked him to make out with her. She was a bit of a nymphomaniac but he did not mind it.

 

“Fuck. This. Shit,” Rey snapped when she barged into Kylo’s house with a sour look pinching her flushed face.

 

He wanted to tell her that she was late for their date but instead he sat down beside her on the couch. She huffed noisily with frustration, clearly bothered by something.

 

“Do you want me to lick your pussy?” The words tasted foreign on his tongue and the act itself was an alien concept to him but it was something she had expressed interest in previously. He once read that the high experienced when murdering someone was similar to an orgasm. 

 

“I want to leave.” She looked him sharply in the eyes and the mischievous glint in hers perplexed him greatly. “Let’s leave this shithole town.”

 

“Okay,” he replied lamely. As he stood to his feet to trail after her he hesitated and glanced over his shoulder at the decorative pillows on the couch. He grabbed the knife he had painstakingly hid earlier and slid it into the leather sheath he kept wrapped around his left ankle.

 

He had only thought of killing her in the confines of his living room but he supposed he could make do with other locations. 

 

Rey flung open his front door with renewed vigour.

 

“Hey, kid!” Han called out, the multiple bags of groceries in his hands prevented him from waving at the two teens. “Where are you two headed?”

 

Kylo punched Han in the face right then. He hadn’t realized his hand was even fisted and in the air until it connected with fleshy skin and ridge bone. The older man was on the ground seconds later. Satisfaction bubbled up his chest as he watched Han look at him with disbelief when he snatched the set of keys from out of his pocket and climbed into the car. When the engine roared to life Kylo gave Han a final look of disinterest and peeled out of their driveway.

 

In the passenger seat Rey squealed with excitement and it was sound that he found to be interesting in a sort of ear-splitting way. It was different. 

 

*

 

Kylo quickly realized that Rey’s act of spontaneity and impulse was a terrible idea. In fact, she had an awful habit of getting them in trouble. 

 

She had managed to get them banned from Cosmic Battle after an employee caught him tickling her ear with his tongue. Then they dine-and-dashed at some chain restaurant when she discovered that he did not have a single dollar on him. It kind of all came to a head when in the process of her removing his shirt he crashed the car into a tree. When the car blew up into flames he considered it to be an ominous sign from a greater being.

 

She shrugged it off and dragged his topless self to the main road. With him by the side of the road, his thumb in the air, and her back turned to him he speculated whether the drivers passing by them were offended by the sight of his pale chest and pebbled nipples or not. Everyone either pretended that they were not there or just openingly looked at him with disgust.

 

Thankfully, a nice old man in his nice old van stopped for them. It confused him when she aggressively shook her head and gave the stranger a scowl with all of her teeth bared. She wanted him to get them a free ride and he did just that. She should have thanked him for all his hard work.

 

“I am going to be so fucked off if we get murdered,” Rey said loud enough for him to hear and climbed into the backseat.

 

Kylo liked Snoke. He was a war veteran and that meant he’d killed people before. It was difficult not to attack Snoke with questions about how many people he’d killed or how he killed them but he did not want Rey to think he was a psychopath. Even if he was one. He wasn’t too sure why he held his tongue during the ride.

 

Snoke seemed receptive of him and even gifted him a warm sweater to cover his ‘tits’ as Rey had said rather standoffishly from the back.

 

It was obvious that she was still mad at him for getting into the van but the old man took them to a restaurant and offered to treat them to a hot meal. He tried to catch her eye from across the table but she was too busy examining Snoke’s wallet and the picture of his family to return his looks. It was kind of rude of her to ignore him when he always made sure to give her his full attention. 

 

“A potato head,” Rey said as she mocked the shape of Snoke’s youngest child and then violently threw the wallet back towards him. The table shook when she exited the restaurant and slammed the door behind her.

 

Snoke chuckled as the corners of his eyes crinkled and he turned to face Kylo.

 

Her looks of unease, squinted eyes, and pursed lips suddenly flashed before him and the urge to get up and go was strong. So he excused himself and headed to the toilets in the back. Snoke followed hotly on his trail.

 

It was strange how Snoke shuffled closer to him, their dicks still out in the open after pissing. Kylo wanted to run back to Rey but it felt as if something had taken a hold of his mind and froze his body in place. When Snoke pulled one of the hands he had been using as a shield away from his crotch and kissed the back of it disgust filled his stomach and acid rose up his throat.

 

Only Rey was allowed to touch him.Only Rey was allowed to hold his hand. Only Rey was allowed to kiss him. Only Rey was allowed to--

 

“What the fuck is going on here?”

 

Kylo watched from the corner of his eye as Snoke dropped his hand like it had just burnt him and quickly took a few steps away from him. Something prickled behind his eyes as he zipped up his fly and turned to face a very angry and pissed off Rey standing at the threshold of the washroom door.

 

It was like watching a silent film. He knew she was yelling and could see the spit fly out of her mouth as she mouthed off at Snoke but there was a ringing in his ears that prevented him from hearing properly. The tips of his ears burned and there was a vinegary feeling in his belly that reminded him of when he got food poisoning from an undercooked turkey.

 

The sound of the bathroom door closing behind Snoke was what pulled him out from the metaphorical pool of water he had been submerged in.

 

Rey looked upset and it was obvious that she was distressed so he allowed her to grab his wrist and drag him out to the picnic tables out front. It felt like he was being interrogated and it was evident that she was pissed off about how indifferent he was about everything. He wasn't, though. When he imagined her in his shoes, an empathy tactic that he had read about, his hand fisted unconsciously and he had to will them to slacken.

 

At that moment, he knew he could never let something like that happen, to him and especially not to her, ever again.

 

His eyes drifted lower and widened at what he saw next. He watched as she thumbed through a familiar tan wallet, pocketing a thick wad of cash, and then tossed the emptied wallet to the ground. She kicked at it a few times and he wondered if she imaged it was Snoke’s head that she was kicking. He definitely was.

 

*

 

“A double room with a double bed for double the sex.” Rey said unflinchingly to the unamused middle-aged woman working the front counter of the first motel they had found.

 

He knew she was lying from the way the left corner of her mouth twitched slightly. But when she pulled him on to the bed and asked him to turn on some porn he wondered if maybe she was telling the truth. Though they sat on the bed with their backs against the headboard and their feet stretched out straight in front of them he knew that they were still close enough that she could reach out for him if she wanted to.

 

There was a small part of him that wanted her to touch him again.

 

His internal monologue was cut short when she climbed off the bed and locked herself in the bathroom. He felt a sense of urgency pass through him when he realized he was finally alone for the first time since they ran away from home. He had come here with a purpose.

 

Kylo was going to kill Rey.

 

Light on his feet, he snatched the knife from out of its leather sheath and tiptoed over to the bathroom door. With the knife gripped tightly in his hand and his ear pressed against the door he closed his eyes and calmed his mind. This was it. This was what he had been--

 

Wait.

 

She was crying. He could hear the faint sounds of her sobs over the pornographic moans from the television. Just as quickly as it came his resolve to murder her suddenly faded into nothingness. The wash of relief that overcame him when she opened the door a second after he returned his knife to its sheath was entirely all too confusing. Why was he glad that she did not see him in his murderous state of mind?

 

He knew something inside of him was changing, that she was causing all these strange flips in his stomach. She was a catalyst to something that he wasn’t too sure of just yet. 

 

When she made a beeline for the door of their room and did so without so much as a glance at him he felt his chest ache painfully. Heart palpations were never an issue for him but it had become a common occurrence once she became a part of his world. He made a mental note to seek medical attention if it worsened.

 

She returned fifteen minutes later. Her hair fell over her face and in the dim light it was difficult to see her face clearly. The tip of her nose looked pink and irritated, like a bee had stung her. She must have because he caught a glimpse of her eyes and it looked swollen as well. He sincerely hoped she wasn’t allergic to bee stings. His own lack of allergies meant he did not have an epinephrine pen to give to her if she really needed one. 

 

The mattress dipped under her weight and he had to swallow down the confusing sense of relief he felt at her physical closeness. He snuck another glance at her and saw just how red her eyes were. He wondered why she did not feel comfortable enough to cry in front of him. He would have handed her a tissue. 

 

There a small part of him that wanted to ask her if she wanted to hold his hand. The space between his fingers seemed so cold and alone without hers interwoven into his. His palm itched and he had to clench his hand into a tight fist in an attempt to make the pain stop. He’d gotten used to her slotting her hand into his and dragging him along that it seemed strange to not have her hands on him.

 

It was difficult to not stare at her hands and even harder to not glance at it too often. The skin on the back of her hands looked dry from the abrasive soap they used at the restaurant and her knuckles looked chapped. Her nail beds were dull and her cuticles were a mess.

 

But he knew that his were no better. Awkwardly, he tucked his hands neatly in his lap and waited.

 

“I can’t go home. Like, ever. You can,” Rey said quietly as she stared off into the distance.

 

“I don’t want to.”

 

“Do you want me?”

 

His breath caught in his throat. “What?”

 

“Do you want me or do you just go along with things?”

 

“I want you.” He knew that was what she wanted to hear but he wasn't sure if he was lying or not. 

 

“I’m going to find my parents, my real parents,” she sighed. “You can come if you want.”

 

“Yeah. Okay.”

 

The idea of parting ways seemed entirely wrong and perverse. The mattress jostled as she curled on to her side.

 

“Kylo?”

 

“Yeah?”

 

“Will you cuddle me?”

 

He hesitated for a moment. There was something intimate about sharing a pillow with another person. But this was Rey and she asked very politely. So he tucked his knees behind hers and shifted his torso until his front was pressed closely to her back. He wanted to curl his arm around her waist but that seem too familiar so he settled on holding her shoulder. 

 

Her hair smelled like the greasy fries and cheap coffee they snacked on earlier but it was oddly comforting. This was probably the closest he had ever been to another human being and he wondered if there would ever be another once he murdered her.

 

Maybe he’ll wait a bit longer to kill her.

**Author's Note:**

> everyone needs to go watch The End of The Fucking World, like, yesterday 
> 
> it's #gritty


End file.
